


The Door in the Desert

by thornmallow



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 15:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thornmallow/pseuds/thornmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I didn’t come here to wonder,” Carlos says.  “I came here to know.”</p>
<p>Cecil groans.  “It’s a very worrisome trait of yours.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Door in the Desert

Carlos stands before the door, thinking. It’s a standard issue door, by all accounts: made of oak, carved with simple panels, nicked and weather-beaten in some places. The door is not covered with esoteric sigils, smears of dried blood, or vague warnings scrawled in a dead language. It is merely a door, the kind a person might expect on any number of residential American streets.

But Carlos is in the desert, the neighborhood only of small skittering lizards and distant, howling coyotes. There’s a cactus about three feet to the left of him, and a bird he can’t categorize – a vulture, maybe, but much smaller and with several more talons than usual – perches on top of it. The bird stares at Carlos with intense, expectant interest.

The doorknob isn’t anything special, either. It is exactly what anyone would imagine, were they to picture the average doorknob. It is not ornate, it is not crafted from ancient, ominously glowing metal. Carlos notes that there’s no apparent keyhole on either side of the door; that, in fact, he cannot tell which way the thing opens at all.

Numerous chains are looped around the door, placed there by the farmer, John Peters. Carlos thinks he could remove them without much trouble.

The wind unsettles the sand around his shoes (sensible boots in a drab color; appropriate for desert walks), kicks up an eddy that scatters sand grains across the lapel of his lab coat. This wind is the only sound in his ears.  


Aside from the knocking, of course.

“Can I ask your name?” Carlos says to the door, trying not to feel silly. He’s mostly abandoned his sense of propriety since coming to Night Vale, but occasionally the sheer absurdity of the situation is just not tolerable. And he knows what this looks like: a man alone in the desert, trying to engage with a wayward door that seems to have liberated itself from someone’s house.  
The knocking picks up speed and volume, but there is no other reply.

“That doesn’t give me much clarity,” Cecil says. “Are you a person? Are you trapped? Somehow?”

The most benevolent theory suggests that the door really is a suburban renegade, and may possibly open to some poor soul’s disembodied linen closet. Carlos could believe this type of spatial distortion. He’s come to accept all kinds of distortions over the past year.

The knocking fades away. Carlos shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He runs his fingers along the chain links, tests the weight. As he thought: easily moved.  
He starts to lift the chains.

“Don’t.” The voice is behind him, breathless and familiar. “It’s not a good idea, Carlos.”

“Cecil,” he says. He doesn’t move, but he lets the chain in his hand fall back against the door. “This is a matter of scientific inquiry.”

It’s also a matter of the dreams he’s been having, dreams of this exact spot in the desert and this exact door – and the knocking. But he doesn’t mention that.

“I urge you to reconsider,” Cecil says. “Come on. Let’s go back. Let’s return to town. Okay? There are a thousand things for you experiment on there. Things that probably won’t kill you instantly. Please.”

“How can you be sure that will happen?” Carlos says. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Yes, it could be only the yawning void of space,” Cecil says, as though conceding a rational point, “but it could also not be that. It could be much worse.”

“I didn’t come here to wonder,” Carlos says. “I came here to know.”

Cecil groans. “It’s a very worrisome trait of yours.”

This is the fundamental difference between the two men. It is not merely Carlos’s job but his driving desire to quantify and qualify the world; to arrange the various puzzles of life into coherent, digestible images, patterns, and formulas. Carlos operates on definitions: creating them, clarifying them, and then applying them for use. For everyone’s use. Holding a candle to the unknown and illuminating its features – that’s the core of a scientist’s purpose.

To Cecil, some – possibly all – mysteries of the universe could not be known. Should not be known. Must not be known. When confronted with an anomaly, such as the teleporting, invisible clock tower, Cecil reacts as though such things require no explanation. They simply exist, like a concrete sidewalk, like beanbag chairs.

“Don’t you ever wonder ‘why’?” Carlos asked him once.

“Of course,” Cecil said. “For a few minutes, now and then. But I get over it.” He smiled and added, “Sometimes with government assistance.”

Carlos smiled back, uncertainly. At first, he had thought that Cecil’s way of speaking was a joke, maybe even malevolent. But he eventually came to realize that Cecil was deadly serious. He was just cheerful about it.  
Right now he is not cheerful. Right now he is frightened, upset, and tugging at the sleeve of Carlos’s lab coat.

“Please,” he says again.

The door remains quiet.

Carlos’s hair and neck are gritty with sand. He’s been out here for the better part of the afternoon, and it will be dark in another hour or so.

“Fine.” He takes Cecil’s hand, gives it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll leave it alone.”

Cecil grins with relief. He turns on his heel and starts walking, pulling Carlos along behind him, babbling now about various city council mandates, about bake sales and new vaccinations that either protect against or cause a super-plague, etc.

Carlos listens attentively, and asks disbelieving questions where appropriate, but all he can hear is the loud, persistent sound of something knocking on a wooden door.

 

Two weeks later, and he’s out in the desert again. The door haunts him. Something raps against his windows at night, a fist, maybe, or many fists, or something else altogether. When he goes to look outside, he sees nothing; hears nothing. He sleeps fitfully. He misreads data, makes incorrect calculations. The other scientists frown politely at his conclusions and often begin their responses with a hesitant, “Um.”

He’s got to open this door.

Cecil arrives just as Carlos manages the last of the chains. The thin, metal links clank loudly as they land on top of the others, the last in a pile Carlos has made on the sand. The not-vulture circles overhead.  
Carlos takes hold of the doorknob. He won’t look at Cecil.

The sound has become organic, beating inside of him with the same rhythm and force as his own heart, superseding it. He obeys his body, as anyone naturally would. It’s the reasonable thing to do.  
But Cecil’s arms are around his waist, pulling him back, forcing him to his knees. Carlos’s hand is still on the doorknob, and the knob turns as he falls. The door creaks slowly open.

At first, Carlos feels immense relief. The knocking stops. There is silence. But he cannot see beyond the door – no light shines through the widening crack as it opens, and the silence becomes overwhelming. It’s as though every noise – the knocking, the whistling eddies of sand, the cry of the bird above them, and the shout forming on Cecil’s lips – all of these have been consumed. Carlos lurches forward, his blood rushing, his muscles straining. Every part of him is alive with movement and fear, but he can’t hear any of it; his heart thrums like a silent engine, frantic but with no audible beat.

Cecil claps one hand over Carlos’s eyes. There’s something barreling towards them, an energy or a presence, Carlos isn’t sure. He feels it like a gaze boring into the back of his head, unseen but definite. Cecil’s fingers dig into Carlos’s temple, clutching him, blocking out his vision. Cecil shudders against him, his body buckling as though he’s been grabbed and struck. Carlos struggles—his own hand grips the doorknob as he pulls back with all his might.

The presence resists him, compels him to let go. To lose himself in the peace of silence. Wouldn’t that be nice? Everybody talks too much, breathes too loudly, coughs incessantly. Everybody sings off key, and always to the most annoying songs. They take up so much space with their noise. Wouldn’t it be better if the world just kept its damn mouth shut for once? Forever?

Carlos has to admit that it’s an attractive notion, particularly in Night Vale, where people holler and shriek and babble incoherently at all hours of the day.

But then he thinks of Cecil’s voice. Cecil, still holding him and shaking with such violence that he must be screaming.

Carlos steadies his mind. He thinks of Cecil’s voice, and with great effort, he shuts the door.

Sound howls back into Carlos’s veins; his bones and ears. He collapses onto the sand along with Cecil, and for a few moments they just lie there, heaving.

Carlos exhales sharply when he glances over at Cecil. The other man’s eyes are dark, haunted; his face is ashen and streaked with tears. Three deep claw marks gouge his arm, and if Carlos squints, the wounds glow faintly around the edges.

“God,” he says, sitting up immediately. “What happened? What happened to you?”

“I covered your eyes,” Cecil says, “because I didn’t want you to see. I didn’t want you to know.” He stands up slowly, painfully. “I still don’t.”

“We need to get you to the hospital,” Carlos says.

“That would probably be best.” Cecil starts to limp forward, back towards where he had parked. Carlos takes Cecil’s uninjured arm and loops it around his own neck, lets the other man lean on him for support. They walk like this together, out of the sand wastes, quiet except for their breathing.

Carlos is grateful, enough that he doesn’t ask any more questions. He wants to, but the words die in his throat whenever he looks over at Cecil. The man’s smile is a strained grimace. He has made a sacrifice today, done something he would never do if Carlos was any other person.

So Carlos says almost nothing.

“I wonder about that bird.” It had disappeared sometime during the struggle; flown off to God knows where. He can’t imagine why it had been observing him in the first place.

“Oh, that,” Cecil says. He laughs weakly, lets his chin rest on top of Carlos’s head. “Agent of the city council. Nothing to worry about.”

Carlos opens his mouth, then shuts it again. They’re almost to the cars. He sighs. “Right. Of course.”


End file.
